by Robert Lane
Afterward, we lay next to each other, studying her ceiling. Actually, I was thinking of how quickly and diplomatically I could escape to bed. Trust me on this as well—after a man makes love, it’s lights out. She said, “I don’t know how you do that.”
“Do what?”
She tilted her head. “Make love like the whole world depends on it.”
“I’m a soldier on leave.” I tried to suppress a yawn, but it had a life of its own.
“Nice try. But”—she propped herself up on an elbow and brushed the hair away from her face—“I was hoping for some words to make my head spin.”
My yawn subsided. “Words ring so hollow.”
“To the contrary. They’re the most powerful drug.”
“Kipling?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You know,” I said as I rotated on my elbow to mimic her position, “he encouraged his son to enter the Great War, and the lad was killed at eighteen. He then wrote, ‘If any question why we die/Tell them, because our fathers lied.’”
“This is pillow talk?”
“We have no pillow.”
“Well”—she gave a slight shake of her head—“you certainly know how to flutter a girl’s heart. Tell me, do you write poetry as well?”
“Sadly, I cannot.”
“A shame.” She traced a finger over my chest. “And why is that?”
“I have a rare neurological disorder, typing Tourette’s.”
“Hmm…I can see how that might create issues.”
“It does make for interesting lines.”
“One can imagine.”
“If any question why we die/Tell them, because our fucking fathers lied.”
“Well, then”—she flipped her hair again off her face—“that certainly deepens the tone just a tad.”
“It does.”
“You tired?”
“Beat.”
“Do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Kiss me hard.”
And to think that I was looking for an early exit.
Later, as Kathleen slept, I crept out to her patio. Her balcony in downtown St. Pete offered panoramic views of Tampa Bay. The moon illuminated the water like a low-voltage bathroom night-light. Lightning echoed around the horizon. Tampa Bay registers thousands of strikes a year, and Tampa is believed to be a Calusa Native American word meaning “sticks of fire.” Or maybe “a place to pick up sticks.” No one really knows.
Susan’s words split my head as if they were fired from a drone: her wrecking ball.
No doubt what that meant.
I refused to believe Jenny had voluntarily left her phone. Therefore, if alive, she was in danger and existing in horror while I had pushed back my investigation so I could enjoy a glass of wine, a sampling of a banana cream pie, and vouch as to the authenticity of a hand-scraped hardwood floor.
I texted Garrett. He instantly confirmed our new departure time.
At four thirty in the morning, when you don’t know whether people on the street are still up from the previous day or are in the new day, my black truck emerged around the corner. I climbed into the passenger’s side. Garrett punched the gas, and we were doing thirty before I got the door shut.
“You map it?” I asked. He didn’t bother to answer, nor did we speak for the first half hour. Morgan’s old red spinnaker bag was in the backseat along with a pile of clothes. I changed into jeans, boots, a T-shirt, and a tight jacket with inside pockets. I strapped on a shoulder holster.
I riffled through the spinnaker bag and extracted my Boker knife and Smith & Wesson.
CHAPTER 18
Jenny
The morning birds greeted Jenny with a discordant, symphonic background that sounded like the tuning of nature’s third-string piccolo section. The rooster crowed like a deranged conductor with no sense of the time signature.
She checked on her spiked bottle. Good to go. She made another notch on her wall calendar with one of the nails she’d freed from the now permanently crippled Adirondack chair. She did some sit-ups but collapsed on the mat after a dozen or so. Her muscles were fine; it was her will that was atrophying. It wisped out the cracks of the old garage like a reverse breeze. She lay on her back on the mat and stared at the bottom of the rowboat that hung over her head. A new concoction of panic and fatalism had taken up residence in her mind, and like water in her ear, she couldn’t shake it out.
She’d given up playing songs in her head; that just made her mad. She’d tossed in the towel on dreaming about the sun and the beach—look what that had gotten her. She felt herself slipping and not dreaming at all, but dreading the next day, the next hour, the very moment it took it to draw another breath.
What was that poem, she thought, that Shields—excuse me, Dr. Shields—creamed his pants over in English class? Something about raging against the dying of the light. She’d had no idea what he was talking about. Not then.
“Hey, Shields”—she stood up and shouted to the black air—“you out there? ‘Cause guess what? I get it, dude. I mean I get it way beyond what you could ever hope to lift from a page. You and your sorry English-teaching ass have no idea what you were talking about.”
Like the smell of “forgotten,” she thought, rage against the dying of the light is a terrible thing to have to figure out on your own. And at my age? Really?
Her body shuddered, and she thought she might cry. She wanted to cry. Might even be good for me. Okay, girl. Let’s give it a go.
Ah, shit. I can’t even cry.
She poured a bottle of water over her head. She tossed the empty bottle into the white plastic pail with the busted handle.
“I am forgotten,” she said as she watched pellets of water drop from her hair onto the concrete floor. Like dripping off a roof, and I’m the roof. She paced a circle and said it again, “I am forgotten.” Shouting now, “I am forgotten!”
Someone fumbled with the lock.
She went to the freezer, her mind like the ice within.
Take it in with strength.
Nasty right back.
CHAPTER 19
We took a cloverleaf off the interstate. A lone Mobil gas station rested at the bottom of the exit ramp and reflected dawn’s timid light like in an Edward Hopper painting. A dark sedan flashed past us going in the opposite direction. I made a note to double back to the gas pumps. Maybe it had security cameras. The five-inch, folded Boker knife was in my left inside jacket pocket, the Smith & Wesson in the shoulder holster.
A few minutes later, Garrett pulled the truck under a gnarled oak with lower branches the size of offensive linemen. Spanish moss bowed from the tree and dusted the top of a split rail fence. I checked my watch—twenty-six minutes to sunrise. I estimated a five-minute trek to reach the house, which, according to public records and Google Earth, was the only structure on the eight acres except for what appeared to be a single-car garage.
We left my truck and sprinted low through a field of ancient oaks. Fifty yards out, we went to a belly crawl. I was rooting for the dark, but it was retreating as if it had an appointment on the other side of the world and was running late. I cursed myself for not starting earlier. I was only half in this game, and that was a dangerous, tenuous position to be in. I was in no man’s land—figuratively and literally. We stopped about thirty paces from the house. Its paint was so flaked that a stiff breeze could prep it for another coat. It had a slanted porch and a tin roof.
“No vehicle,” Garrett said as we lay in the grass before our final charge.
“I think we’re playing inchworm for nothing,” I said. “Hard to believe that someone would be in the middle of nowhere with no transportation, but let’s not assume that. Could be something in the garage, and for all we know, they got Gatlings trained on us.”
“Man’s first WMD.”
“And now they’re viewed affectionately in museums.” I kept my eyes on the house, as did Garrett.
“We’re a sick species,” Garrett said.
“Dr. Gatling was actually an MD,” I said as I flicked a spider off my left hand. “He invented the machine gun to shrink army sizes and to reduce disease-related death in the army.”
“The garbage people feed themselves. Are you done?”
“I am.” I stood. “You got me?”
“Do now.” He reached over his back for his M110 SASS.
I ran low at the house. A rooster crowed once, and then again, momentarily interrupting the morning argument of birds. Garrett circled to the rear of the property but still had me in his view. I jumped onto the covered porch. I took a step back, kicked in the door, and went in with my gun raised.
“Jenny!” I yelled. “Jenny Spencer.”
Nothing.
I hit a light switch. A solitary lamp lying on the floor next to an overturned wicker side table flicked to life. Place was trashed. Three open doors were off to my right. Bedrooms. A kitchen in the corner. Dirty dishes. Every drawer was open. A TV with rabbit ears sat on a table with a leaf down. Garrett blew through the back door and went to the kitchen. I cleared the bedrooms. Pillows, blankets, and clothing littered the floor. The closets were inside out.
“We’re late,” Garrett said as he opened the refrigerator and peered inside.
“I’m checking the garage out back.” I was eager to search the single outbuilding, as I still held hope that Jenny was on the property, although that light was dimming faster than dawn was brightening.
The two swinging doors to the single garage were shut, but the padlock hung open on the hardware. The doors swung out toward me, which wasn’t an ideal way to enter a potentially hostile room. I unlatched the doors, and while I stood with my back to the one door, I hooked my foot around the other door and kicked it open. I spun around the corner and found my gun aimed at a grill that was missing its propane tank. No need to injure it any further. I shouldered my gun. A rowboat hovered above my head. I gave it a swing. Light. Empty. A workout mat was on the floor with sheets neatly tucked in beneath it. I recalled how neatly Jenny’s bed had been made at Susan’s house. My foot hit something, and I cut my eyes to the floor.
I picked up a partially frozen water bottle with two nails protruding out of its side near the bottom. One had dried blood on it. A strap was tied around the end with the cap. My guess was that it was close to seventy-five degrees in there, yet the bottle had slushy ice in it. A plastic bucket held empty water bottles, and the concrete around my feet was wet, as if someone had spilled one.
The crude weapon captured my curiosity. I couldn’t ascertain the purpose of ice-ensconced nails, but it was nasty. I went around the corner and checked the outhouse. It had red shag carpet and a picture of the cast of M*A*S*H. “Good times,” I said to Hot Lips on the way out. Garrett was in the garage when I returned.
“Clues?” he asked.
“Look’s like someone might have slept in here.” I nodded toward the workout mat. “But that’s not much to go on.”
I wished Morgan were along. He had an uncanny ability to sense what I couldn’t. And the garage was screaming—I just couldn’t hear it. Instead of staring at the objects in the room, I focused on the structure. Marks on the wall caught my attention. I peered closer at them.
“‘Four, one, two, nine, one, one, one’ mean anything to you?” I asked.
Garrett peered at the wall. “No.” He had been examining a green-and-white Adirondack chair. Its busted arm rested on the floor. “Are those marks relatively new?”
“Appear to be.” Then I saw it. “That’s her number. She was here.”
“Not following.”
“It’s deer,” I said, but what I was thinking was, She’s alive. “Four thousand one hundred twenty-nine deer and three days in the garage.”
“And why is that our girl?” He ran a finger over the indentations in the wood.
“Her father, Larry Spencer, went down in a hunting accident years ago. The county’s final tally that year was four thousand one hundred twenty-nine deer and one man. Mary Evelyn sent me the newspaper article, a real doozy. His death was buried and comingled with a breakdown of the harvest. So many bucks, does, button bucks, oh, and one man.”
Garrett shifted his attention to me. “Bad trade. Apparently not one she’s forgiven. You think the last three marks track her days in captivity?”
“That’d be my guess.”
“McGlashan help us here?”
“Unlikely. Out of his jurisdiction, and the world sees her as a runaway.” But like a Polaroid picture creeping into focus, my conviction was gaining higher resolution. Jenny had been abducted—she was alive.
I picked up the bottle with the nails and handed it to Garrett. He rotated it in his hand. “One thing I can say about her,” he said. He swung the bottle by the strap twice around his head then into the wall. The nails splintered the wood.
“What’s that?”
“Our girl has spunk.”
I pulled into the Mobil station we’d passed on the way in and gassed up. There was a security camera behind the register. McGlashan was next; I left a voice mail asking him to view the tape from the security camera. It was a likely place for the Colemans to refuel. Garrett texted Mary Evelyn and told her Wesley Chapel was a hit.
I called PC.
I had used him and his sidekick, Boyd, for surveillance in the past. They were high-school dropouts, and PC housed an oversized IQ that made formal education a ruse. He balked at my request that he and Boyd camp out for a few days and keep an eye on the Colemans’ property. Garrett eyed me. I’d told him I had plans to have the Colemans’ place watched, and he obviously incorrectly assumed I’d worked out those details beforehand. I wasn’t worried. I told PC to bring Savielly Tartakower’s My Best Games of Chess 1905–1954, that I’d purchased for him. PC and I had spent sweltering hours at the end of my dock, each of us with obsessive focus on floating the other’s king. We used wine corks for kings, and when he lost, I tossed his king—his cork—into the bay. He was a quick learner and soon became a worthy opponent. Tartakower was, due to his wit as much as his ability, my favorite chess player. PC relented and said Boyd could play Angry Birds for days. I described how to get to the vantage point Garrett and I used and told him I’d text him pictures of Randall and Zach Coleman.
The phone calls, however, only treated the symptom. I had come up empty. Even though I was doing eighty on the interstate, I was going nowhere and getting there fast. Nothing but random motion. “Never mistake motion for action,” Hemingway once said. I believe he was quoting Benjamin Franklin, who’d said, “Never confuse motion for action.” Either way, motion is no substitute for action, although for my money, Hemingway chose the better word.
My phone rang. It was McGlashan.
I said, “I think we missed her by an hour.” I explained the past two hours. He couldn’t offer any assistance.
“I made you a copy of the interview, if you want to hear it,” he said. “I listened twice. Nothing there. Straightforward, like Rutledge said.” At least it wasn’t “Detective Rutledge” anymore. “Next time you’re down, drop by the station and—”
“Be there in three.” I pressed the pedal. “Make that two and a half. Do you need to be there?”
“No, and probably won’t be. Rutledge might be, though. If not, just identify yourself.”
“And the Mobil station?” I asked.
“Right. I’ll see what I can do.”
He disconnected. I always got that feeling that I took him to the limit—as if he was an accommodating accomplice at the start of our conversations and a reluctant participant by the end. I set the cruise to eighty-five and swung over to the left lane behind a jacked-up brown pickup truck with a Confederate flag in the back window. The driver pulled away from me.
This was Florida, not Ohio.
CHAPTER 20
Rutledge thrust out his left hand, and I extended mine. Most southpaws shake with their right, but not Rutledge. His ash-gray hair was brushed straight up off his forehead
, like a male bird seeking a mate. It was trimmed around the ears, as if he’d just left the barber’s chair. Some guys look like that all the time. As a general rule, I avoid those people.
“McGlashan wanted me to meet with you.” He glanced at Garrett then back to me. “I’ve got the interview tape, but I’m afraid it won’t help you much. I think that Je—Ms. Spencer just ran.” His eyes were dull, as if he’d seen more than he cared for, or perhaps he never cared. “She was pretty calm the night I interviewed her, especially considering what she’d been through. It occurred to me later that, even at that moment, she might have been planning to slip out. I understand you paid a visit to the Colemans?”
We were in a square conference room. Rutledge and I sat across from each other around a maple table that no one had ever bothered to place a coaster on. Garrett stood against the wall. Outside a window, a solitary palm branch pressed against the glass as if it yearned to join us. One of the three overhead fluorescent bulbs was out. It fluttered on then off. Rutledge reached into his pocket and slid his business card across the table. It stopped just short of the edge. Another inch and he would have scored. I placed mine in the middle of the table.
I said, “I believe we just missed them.”
“That’s what McGlashan told me. You find anything?” He sat back in his chair and drummed the fingers of his left hand on the table. He scratched his chin with his right hand. No wedding ring.
I explained the garage, as well as the numbers on the wall and their significance. I kept the spiked ice bottle to myself.
“So you found nothing, other than you think she was there?” Rutledge asked, as if he wanted to check that box off before moving on.
“That’s correct. I asked Detective McGlashan to see if we could get a visual from a gas station that’s the lone fuel source at the exit.”
“And we’ll let you know if that leads to anything.” He tilted forward and blinked hard. If he caught my respectful use of a title, which he didn’t use, to preface his partner’s name, he didn’t let on.
“Those numbers, four thousand and whatever—”